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MECHANISMS OF RNA DEGRADATION IN YEAST AND MAMMALIAN CELLS

RNA degradation in yeast and mammalian cells take place in cytoplasm, nucleus and mitochondria. Degradation of transcripts with a premature termination codon or without stop codon results in repression of aberrant protein synthesis. The mRNA decay pathway, which degrades mRNAs containing a stem-loop structure has been discovered and characterized in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Eukaryotic transcripts with AU-rich elements in their 3'-untranslated region have a very short half-life. These elements regulate mRNA level in cells.

NOBEL PRIZE 2006 FOR FUNDAMENTAL DISCOVERIES IN THE REGULATION OF EUKARYOTIC GENE EXPRESSION

The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to two American scientists – Andrew Fire and Craig Mello for the fundamental discoveries in gene expression regulation in eukaryotes. They have shown that the presence of double-stranded RNA in the cell induces specific gene silencing. This pheno- menon was called RNA interference – RNAi. Double-stranded RNA is digested in the cell to short effector RNAs, called siRNAs, which are directly responsible for the selective degradation of target mRNA. The process takes place in the cytoplasm.

The Editorial Board
Andrzej Łukaszyk - przewodniczący, Zofia Bielańska-Osuchowska, Szczepan Biliński, Mieczysław Chorąży, Aleksander Koj, Włodzimierz Korochoda, Leszek Kuźnicki, Aleksandra Stojałowska, Lech Wojtczak

Editorial address:
Katedra i Zakład Histologii i Embriologii Uniwersytetu Medycznego w Poznaniu, ul. Święcickiego 6, 60-781 Poznań, tel. +48 61 8546453, fax. +48 61 8546440, email: mnowicki@ump.edu.pl

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